Another Reason EVs Are Not *the* Answer

I posted once last year (quoting the estimable Brent Toderian) about why electric vehicles are not the answer to transportation and climate change.

A few days ago, Matthew Lewis, another long-time Twitter voice on climate and urbanism, had a thread about another problem at the heart of the conversion to EVs. After acknowledging that EVs are part of the solution, he gives a thoughtful explanation of why they are also part of the problem.

Essentially, his starting point is remembering that every manufactured good has embodied carbon from when it was created (raw materials, the energy used to produce it, and so on). A massive object like a car, particularly, has a lot of embodied carbon. So replacing a gas-powered car, just to drive an EV, is not the solution it can seem, and in a counter-intuitive way:

An electric car is only good for the climate to the extent it is driven. That is, an old gasoline car that is only driven 50 miles per week will be lower-carbon than a new EV driven 50 miles per week.... the EV "break even" moment doesn't happen til the EV has been driven about 55,000 miles.

Thanks to the driving mandates imposed on us by most U.S. cities, many people will hit 55,000 miles in  3-4 years. Pretty good! Except, not good for climate.

Because in order for electric cars to be a climate solution we have to reduce vehicle miles traveled at least 25% by 2030. So, EV carbon math starts to get wobbly.

But suppose (for illustrative purposes), by 2030, we legalize walkable neighborhoods, invest in transit/safe bike infrastructure, and eliminate driving mandates. And so now that people can walk to grocer/school/ride transit and bikes to jobs, VMT plummets 25%.

Good news! Except ... ruh-roh, if VMT go down, the carbon payoff for EVs is now 25% longer.

But wait. What if people who live in walkable neighborhoods drive even less?

Take me, for example. I live in a walkable, bikable neighborhood near transit. I drive about 2,500 miles a year. So, if I bought a new EV, it would take 20 years for me to pay off carbon debt; pollution goes down in year 21. Do EVs even last that long?

But most of my trips today are already zero carbon! And importantly... I ONLY SPEND $1,500 A YEAR ON TRANSPORT.

EV math is predicated on a version of the U.S. where everyone drives everywhere all the time, to the tune of 15,000 miles a year, and we do nothing to reduce VMT, which leads to climate failure.

EV math requires everyone to pony up 10's of 1,000s of dollars for a car that would easily buy them many, many years of zero-carbon transport — it would even buy them walkable homes! — if we ended government driving/car ownership mandates.

The EV math presupposes that we continue to waste trillions of dollars per year subsidizing cars and their roads, even though, for a fraction of the cost, we could actually give most Americans the option of driving less — an option that Americans have said, time and time again, they are willing to pay more for. Because driving sucks, people hate it.

[clears throat again] "but electric cars are good, we need them for climate, no doubt." OK. Duly stated/bracketed.

But we also need to drive a whole lot less. We should stop forcing everyone to drive more. That, plus electric cars, would put us on the path to climate progress.

It's similar to Brent Toderian's point about the Jeavons Paradox in the post from last year. Without concerted effort to change infrastructure and decrease VMT, converting a lot of cars to EVs will give a psychological excuse to drive even more, as the federal and state DOTs rebuild and widen highways, cities and businesses make more and larger parking lots, and we sprawl farther away from human-scale places.